Examining race and educational reform in America: History, strategies and an ethnography

This dissertation addresses the topic of educational reform in the United States, concentrating on the intersection of reform initiatives and issues of social difference and discrimination. It involves four interrelated phases. The first involves a historical survey of educational reform. The second is a textual analysis of two contemporary reform measures (namely magnet schools and professional development schools). Third is a discussion of critical multiculturalism as a viable tool for critiquing both magnet school and professional development school initiatives. The fourth phase is an ethnography of a local school that operates simultaneously as a magnet school and a professional development school. Social difference and discrimination in general and more specifically social class and class discrimination and race and racism in particular forms the common thread that runs through all phases of the study. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...